There’s More Than One Way to Smash A Pig!

You may or may not know that there is a new Angry Birds game. I downloaded the free version to my Android for those moments when keeping a child happy and quiet simultaneously are essential to one’s sanity…if you’re a parent, you know exactly what I mean by that. 😉

My middle son was playing a game as a reward for having completed an extra chore I had asked him to do. I heard the usual, “Yessssssssss!”, “One more pig to gooo……yeah! I got him!”, “Hahahaha, die stupid pig!” and “”Take that!” that I am accustomed to hearing when he plays. What caught my attention was the new phrase he used this game.

After playing a particular level multiple times I could tell he was getting frustrated with it’s level of difficulty. He somehow stumbled upon the fact that the birds can be flung in more than one direction in this version. Discovering this fact, of course, led to all of the pigs’ destruction and of course…dun, dun, dun…the next level (feel free to insert oooo’s and ahhhh’s here, lol). Upon seeing for certain that he had indeed cleared the level, he said (rather proudly, mind you) “Well Mom, that just goes to show you, there’s more than one way to smash a pig!” I laughed right out loud! I gave him a high five and told him I was proud of him.

It got me to thinking about the saying I used to hear my Dad (among others) say when I was younger, “There’s more than one way to skin a cat.” While this is as true as Tyler’s statement about smashing pigs, I couldn’t help but think of the “twist” that each generation puts on things from the generation (or two or three) before them. Honestly, I don’t know if my kids have ever heard the saying about skinning cats or not. They certainly haven’t heard it from me! (I try very hard not to use most of the annoying sayings my parents used on me…though I am sure that the ones I do use my children find equally as annoying…lol).

Somehow, that thought led me to thinking about how today’s generations find different (and usually much easier) ways of doing the same things the generation before them had to. Like the other day, My son and I (it happened to be the same son, actually) were walking out of a store. He opted to go through the automatic door while I went through the one I “had to” push open myself. He looked at me like I was crazy as he said, “Mom, why did you do that?? I always go through the door that always opens for you because that way you don’t have to do anything, it’s way easier.” My eyes about popped out of my head as I said to him, “Whoa buddy…THAT was the WRONG thing to say to your Mother who also happens to be a personal trainer. You get your cute little fanny back in that store and you go through the door you have to open for your self…and while you’re at it, do it ten times. That kind of thinking is exactly what got our country in the morbidly obese state that we have found it to be in. Why would you not want to use the perfectly healthy body that the good Lord gave you to do things for yourself? Oh no sir, I’ll have none of that on my watch!”

How many times a day do you fall victim to something as lazy as not walking through the door you have to push open for yourself? This week, I am issuing each and every one of you a challenge. Walk through the door you push (or pull) open, walk up the stairs rather than waiting on the elevator or standing mindlessly on the escalator, don’t use the microwave to warm up your food (use the stove top and a pan..Oooo, archaic idea huh?), if you sit down to watch TV don’t use the remote…get up off the couch and change the channel yourself (it never killed me) or hey, park at the back of the parking lot and walk a few extra steps into the store, library or work. Take the initiative to do just a little extra this week, burn some extra calories, take some extra steps and use your perfectly healthy body to do things for yourself!